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Radio War Nerd EP #417 — The US Civil War, Part 17: Women's Civil War Diaries (Cont.) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-31 22:03:45
Edited:
2026-05-06 14:46:24
Imported:
2023-12
Tags:

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Content

The War Nerd continues his survey of women's Civil War diaries...

The War Nerd continues his survey of women's Civil War diaries (EP #409). In this episode, we discuss Mary Boykin Chesnut's A Diary from Dixie, Lucy Pier Stevens' Another Year Finds Me in Texas and more.

A big thank you to the mighty RWN Legion for supporting the show in this grimmest of years!

THE WAR NERD US CIVIL WAR SERIES:

EP #295: The US Civil War, Part 1: Count Adam Gurowski

EP #297: The US Civil War, Part 2: Bleeding Kansas

EP #300: The US Civil War, Part 3: First Battle of Bull Run

EP #303: The US Civil War, Part 4: McClellan, Treason & The Battle of Antietam

EP #307: The US Civil War, Part 5: Vicksburg

EP #311: The US Civil War, Part 6: Buchanan's Treason & The Mormon War

EP #315: The US Civil War, Part 7: German '48ers, with Matt Christman

EP #323: The US Civil War, Part 8: Thomas, Hood & Southern Honor

EP #327: The US Civil War, Part 9: War on the Water

EP #335: The US Civil War, Part 10: Battle of Shiloh 

EP #340: The US Civil War, Part 11: The Culture Wars (Live in Brooklyn)

EP #352: The US Civil War, Part 12: Gen. John Pope & Second Battle of Manassas

EP #362: The US Civil War, Part 13: Civil War Movies, feat. Eileen Jones

EP #378: The US Civil War, Part 14: The USCT (US Colored Troops)

EP #386: The US Civil War, Part 15: Gettysburg Aftermath, Six Million Pounds of Rotting Meat

EP #409: The US Civil War, Part 16: Women's Civil War Diaries

Total time: 1:13:10

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

Jaime Christley

coming in weapons free with the Dickens hate! I've read a couple of his books over the last 2 years; I've got mixed feelings if I'm being honest - but BLEAK HOUSE has one of the best openings (briefing the reader about Jarndyce v. Jarndyce) by anybody, and many of his best character names. around the same time I read a few Sherlock Holmes stories, and with "A Study in Scarlet" you have to go, What the fuck is your problem with Mormons, man? I mean, you can take or leave Mormonism, but Doyle was off the chain with that one. I think this won't be a controversial take but, neither holds a candle to Melville.

Tristan

I never really understood Civil War nerdery until you guys, thanks for more!

Ellen Harold

.As a child I felt I could never live up to my mother, whom I was told had read *all* of Dickens books at the age of six, while convalescing (or quarantined?) from scarlet fever for six weeks. My grandmother, a NYC public school teacher, had been persuaded by her principal to purchase a complete set! As a result of this and other signs of precocity, my mother was skipped ahead two grades in school (I was not precioous & still haven't read Barnaby Rudge.) You are to be congratulated for reading aloud to your son. Frankly I think five is too young for Dickens. However, when our children were quite young we rented from the local VHS store an Australian anime of David Copperfield, which they loved. (They do these things much better abroad). My son choked up when the dying Steerforth told David to remember him at his best, and David answered "You have no best or worse Steerforth, you are my friend." (You can't find this scene in any other dramatization I have found. More's the pity.) I think you are right that Dickens lend itself to a cartoon treatment, he is not a realist but creates fevered, phantasmagoric worlds. Anyway I later found an abridged cassette tape of Pickwick Papers which my seven-year-old daughter and I listened to in the car during the commute to and from school. She loved it and gave all her dolls Pickwickian names. (I had read it as a teenager because my uncle and cousin were reading it.) Anyway, Pickwick is, as they say, a "picaresque" novel, meaning it has no plot to speak of and so lends itself to abridgment. I always hated English class in school. I thought reading was supposed to be fun, so I, too, remember reading Great Expectations for class as painful. (No doubt it was the nature of the teaching). The David Lean movie, though, is pretty good, especially the young Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket, and Finley Currie, oh, my! Be that as it may, Bleak House, Little Dorritt, and Our Mutual Friend are great favorites of my family. We read the last one aloud. There is also a truly wonderful 1958 English movie of A Tale of Two Cities with Dirk Bogarde and the great Dorothy Tutin. Highly recommended --- but not for pre-schoolers -- maybe ninth grade.

Steven Wilsher

Happy new year to all, and thank you!

Magic Mikey

A tale of two cities is amazing, I read it as an adult and it completely changed my opinion of dickens, it's a fantastic exploration of the nature of revolutions. It also has the best opening AND closing lines of a novel.

Winston Reid

An interesting topic for a future Western Civil War episode could be the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles. A rather bizarre secessionist militia group formed in Los Angeles in 1861. They were made up mainly of Californios and recent arrivals from the border south, but also counted German Jews, Irishmen, and a single African American among their ranks. Many of members later crossed the desert into Texas where they became officers in the Confederate Army, including Albert Johnston who joined the militia as a “advisor.” The California Battalion, stationed at Los Angeles harbor, was created (in part) to quell secessionist sympathies in the Los Angeles area. It later participated in the battle in New Mexico mentioned in the episode.

Jason Thompson

I haven’t read Chesnut but it is interesting to me that she has this moment of sympathy for an enslaved woman, which was more than most of the Lost Cause writers would concede 50+ years later. Is Chesnut smarter than them? Were nostalgic racists in the 1900s-1920s that much more vehemently pro-slavery than those who lived at the time? Both?

Arielle Curtin

Been meaning to read the Chestnut diary since running into a quote from it in The Hemmingses of Monticello. Very snide comment about how only the plantation wives cannot see the resemblance of the enslaved’s babies to their own husbands.

Alex Muir

I was struck by the women diarists' matter-of-fact approach to death and illness at home (bursting eye-balls and all) but completely oblivious to what death looked like on the battlefield - a totally romantic vision. Could they really delude themselves that corpses on the field didn't bloat, that they were immune from maggots? What's that about???

Jason Thompson

My dad (a lifelong perv and also a mega colonialist/Anglophile, so a huge Burton fan) loves telling that Burton story. XD Poor Burton! But more importantly, didn’t you say in episode 1 that there is a Black woman nurse’s civil war diary as well? I wanted to hear about that one!! Regardless, thanks, great episode!

radiowarnerd

Chesnut is much smarter than those who were around her in the CW years. It's one reason she's so permanently annoyed with them.

radiowarnerd

Yes, I imagine they could. Death-in-battle was a sacred event for committed families, and there's always been an almost Valhall-like belief that 'the slain' did not decay.

radiowarnerd

Oh yeah. She had a tongue that could scrape old paint off the walls.

radiowarnerd

I'm reading it right now. Raines spends a very long time building up to the story of the unit, so be prepared for a lot of gossip about Alabama historians' feuds of a couple of generations ago. I actually did find that part interesting but it might be slow going if your interest is the unit itself.

xnfec

My mum grew up speaking French at home in rural Uruguay in the 1920's.

Jackie Jump Jorp

Woo-hoo, oblique shout-out to the Battle of Glorieta Pass in northern New Mexico!! I got drunk on secreted vodka among the Glorieta pines on a senior trip in high school, unconsciously toasting the union triumph amid a booze and weed haze. Poor New Mexico, always the forgotten, beautiful, high-altitude ass-end of every empire it's been a part of. Even the Confederates couldn't be bothered to hold onto it for more than 9 months.

Cameron Young

Sign me up for the civil war - west coast edition please

Demented Avenger

Listening to this late, I recall a story Jim Backus told while he was a panelist on the Match Game back in 1973 or 1974, which illustrates how popular Mr. Magoo was. At one point, he had been on a movie with Marilyn Monroe, and Backus got called up to Monroe's dressing room. Obviously Backus thought about *that*, but when he got there, Monroe's request was that he perform Mr. Magoo's voice for her.